The effects of Sputnik: 50 years on

Fifty years ago Australians, along with many others in the western world, looked up into the sky to see a small rapidly moving light.

It was of course a Soviet spacecraft. The world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1.

No bigger than a basketball, it ushered in the new age of space and a host of military, technological and scientific developments. Not to mention the US/Soviet space race.

To look back at just what Sputnik meant to the world, Breakfast was joined in our Sydney studios by Fred Watson, the astronomer in charge at the Anglo-Australian Observatory, and also an eyewitness to the Sputnik fly-by!